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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



its adherents maintain that, beset with diffi- 

 culties as it is, though not more so than 

 others, it has yet this merit, that it leaves a 

 nay open to speculative thought, alike re- 

 moved from the vagaries of mere ontologi- 

 cal abstraction and the entire subjection 

 of mind to a muddy and brute extraction. 

 They might add, also, that this theory 

 shows that, in the interpretation of the se- 

 rial progress of being, we are not altogether 

 shut up to a choice between specific and 

 spasmodic creations and his own theory of 

 evolution, as Mr. Spencer triumphantly as- 

 sumes throughout his argument. Indeed, 

 nothing is more easy than to make theories ; 

 but the difficulty is to get them adopted in- 

 to Nature as the satisfactory reason of her 

 processes. But, until they are so adopted, 

 they are no more than the scaffolding of sci- 

 ence by no means the completed structure. 

 Now, have the Darwinian and the Spencerian 

 hypotheses been so adopted ? Can we say 

 that any questions on which such cautious 

 observers and life-long students as Darwin, 

 Owen, Huxley, Wallace, and Agassiz, still 

 debate, are settled questions ? Prof. Tyn- 

 dall, for example, says : " Darwin draws 

 heavily upon the scientific tolerance of the 

 age ; " and again, that " those who hold the 

 doctrine of evolution are by no means ig- 

 norant of the uncertainty of their data, and 

 they yield no more to it than a provisional 

 assent." With what propriety, then, can a 

 merely provisional conclusion be erected into 

 an assured stand-point whence to assail tra- 

 ditionary beliefs as if they were old wives' 

 fables ? 



More than that, a theory may be far 

 more advanced than any of those ; may be 

 able to account satisfactorily for all the phe- 

 nomena within its reach, as the Ptolemaic 

 theory of the sidereal appearances did, even 

 to the prediction of eclipses, or as the ema- 

 nation theory of light did, up to the time 

 of Dr. Young, and yet turn out altogether 

 baseless. Nature is a prodigious quantity 

 and a prodigious force ; with all her out- 

 ward uniformities she is often more cunning 

 than the Sphinx ; and, like Emerson's Brah- 

 ma, she may declare to her students 



" They know not well the subtle ways 

 I keep, and pass and turn again." 



We have looked into her face a little, 



measured some of her ellipses and angles, 



weighed her gases and dusts, and unveiled 

 certain forces, far and near all which are 

 glorious things to have done, and some of 

 them seemingly miraculous ; but we are still 

 only in her outer courts. Humboldt's " Cos- 

 mos," written thirty years ago, is said to 

 be already an antiquated book ; and Conitc, 

 who died but lately, and whom these eyes 

 of mine have seen, could hardly pass a col- 

 lege examination in the sciences he was sup- 

 posed to have classified forever. Let us 

 not be too confident, then, that our little 

 systems of natural law will not, like other 

 systems of thought spoken of by Tennyson, 

 " have their day." 



The other distinction I had in mind, in 

 my speech, was that, while there are some 

 problems accessible to scientific methods, 

 there are others that are not ; and, that any 

 proffered scientific solution of the latter, 

 either negative or affirmative, is most 

 likely an imposition. What I meant was 

 that science, according to its own confes- 

 sion, that is, according to the teachings of 

 its most accredited organs, pretends to no 

 other function than to the ascertainment of 

 the actual phenomena of Nature and their 

 constant relations. The sphere of the finite 

 and the relative, i. e., of existence, not of 

 essence, and of existence in its mutual and 

 manifested dependencies in time and space, 

 not in its absolute grounds, circumscribes 

 and exhausts its jurisdiction. Was I wrong- 

 ly taught, Mr. Editor ? Does science assert 

 for itself higher and broader pretensions ? 

 Does it propose to penetrate the supernatu- 

 ral or metaphysical realms, if there be any 

 such ? Does it intend to apply its instru- 

 ments to the measurement of the infinite, 

 and its crucibles to the decomposition of 

 the absolute ? 



You, as a man of excellent sense, will 

 promptly answer, No ! But, then, I ask, is 

 thought, whose expatiations are so restless 

 and irrepressible, to be forever shut up to 

 the phenomenal and relative ? Is it to be 

 forever stifled under a bushel-measure, or 

 tied by the legs with a surveyor's chain ? 

 May it not make excursions into the field 

 of the Probable, and solace itself with moral 

 assurances when physical certainties fail ? 

 May it not, mounting the winged horse of 

 analogy, when the good old drudge-horse 

 induction gives out, fly through tracts of 



